


Broom Food

by iulia_linnea



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-21
Updated: 2012-10-21
Packaged: 2017-11-16 18:42:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iulia_linnea/pseuds/iulia_linnea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, lunch can wait.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broom Food

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on 11 October 2011. Cross-posted to [snape_potter](http://snape-potter.livejournal.com/2660421.html).

In the summer of their fifteenth year, Sarah and Samuel, the Potter-Snape twins, had quickly caused a culinary sensation by starting competing food broom businesses in Diagon Alley. Sarah maintained that she'd had the idea first, just as did Samuel, and Harry's efforts to convince them to club together had been roundly ignored. This led to more than one problem for the devoted fathers as they stood in front of Gringotts and watched their children hawk their wares on opposite corners across the street.

"Sausage on a stick! Lovely, crisp and juicy sausages on a stick! Try them with a special dipping sauce!" called Samuel.

"And get yourself a mess for your trouble!" challenged Sarah, who hovered near her brother, her heating bag, just like his, hanging from the back of her broom. "Try a lovely selection of soups in a bowl—all charmed not to spill!"

"How many soups did she make this morning?" Severus asked Harry, shuddering to remember the chaos he'd witnessed in the kitchen.

"Aw, come on, now," Samuel cajoled, "who's that clumsy? It's a _thick_ sauce!"

"Three," Harry replied. "She'd intended four, but Samuel took the last large pot to boil his sausages before grilling them. That's what they were arguing about when you came in."

"Ah." Severus felt his cheeks flush and was glad that Harry wouldn't notice his blush, covered in the darkness of their hiding place as they were. He felt guilty to have left their arguing children to Harry that morning, but he hadn't felt up to dealing with them before his first cuppa of the day.

"Right! A thick, flour-based sauce without flavour, and not as tasty as bean soup, zesty tomato soup, or potato-herb soup!"

"Thanks for the support, by the way," Harry said drily.

"I'm here now, aren't I?" Severus asked, pressing Harry's arm as he noticed a matronly looking witch draw near Sarah's broom to buy soup bowls for herself and her three children. "Excellent sale."

"She's doing well. Before you arrived, she and Samuel were keeping a running count of their sales as they moved up and down the Alley, and she's a bit ahead. It's the no-spill charm she worked out that's helping her."

Severus snorted. "It's hot. How's she selling even hotter soup on a day like today?"

"Cooling charm around her broom."

"Sausage on a stick! Two for the price of one!"

"You'll never make any money that way, you idiot!"

"With _free_ special dipping sauce! Just the thing for the hungry goblin on the go!" Samuel shouted, catching the attention of a group of bankers.

Harry grinned. "Good one, Samuel."

"They're both doing well," Severus said, "but we're not."

"How d'you mean?"

"From whom shall we buy?"

"From both of them."

"Yes," Severus agreed, "but in what order?"

"Well, we could each pick one and—oh," Harry said, realising the flaw in his plan. 

Severus nodded. "Even if we each buy from one of them at the same time, the other will feel slighted by one of us. I say we have lunch at the Leaky."

"You know we can't do that, Severus. We promised."

"Well, I suppose we could wait until they separate again."

"Perhaps they won't," Harry said. "Business seems good for both of them here." He sighed. "I'm hungry."

"I'm hot," Severus replied, taking a step towards Sarah's food broom.

"Wait! You're pulling the—"

"Sod hiding! I'm hungry, too!"

"Yes, Severus, but you just said—"

"That one of them would end up disappointed, I know. Let's just get that over with, shall we? I wasn't able to eat breakfast for having to tidy up the kitchen."

Harry stiffened in disapproval. "Severus. Why?"

"It was filthy."

"But they made the mess, and we told them that—"

"They had to learn to make their own money. How could they do that if they wasted all their selling time in cleaning?"

Harry shook his head. "Idiot. You spoil them. It's not good."

"You're the one who advanced them the Galleons for this enterprise."

"That was an investment. They're paying me back at the end of summer, and they have to use their profits to resupply themselves," Harry insisted.

Severus snorted. "I repeat, it's hot, and I'm hungry, and I'm going to—"

"Aunt Luna! Aunt Luna!" both their children shouted then, and Harry and Severus turned to see Sarah and Samuel circling her.

"You're making me dizzy, broomlings," she told them. "Set down."

Samuel and Sarah did.

"I've got sausages, Aunt Luna, with sauce!"

"Right. 'Special' sauce that everyone throws away—but I've got three kinds of soups!"

"And I think I'll try them both," Luna said, as Samuel retorted, "But you're only selling the one kind!" Ignoring him, Luna pulled two Galleons from a pocket. She placed one Galleon in each hand and then set them to floating above them. "On three," she said. "One, two, three!"

Moving as one, Sarah and Samuel placed a soup bowl and a sausage stick in the hand of Luna's that was nearest them, snatching up the Galleon floating above it afterwards. 

"Well, that's one way to do it," Harry remarked.

"A _stupid_ way."

Harry laughed at Severus' irritation, and then laughed harder as Luna eschewed Samuel's offer of dipping sauce and twirled her sausage in the bowl of potato-herb soup she'd purchased from Sarah. 

The kids looked at each other, astonished, as Luna made her way towards Severus and Harry's general position.

"Well," she said, "that's solved that, I think."

Neither Harry nor Severus said anything, not wishing to give themselves away. It wasn't possible that Luna knew they were standing there.

"Yes," Luna continued, just as if she were speaking to someone in particular, "I've been watching them all day, and Sarah's having more luck with her potato-herb soup than the others—and no one likes Samuel's dipping sauce, even though he's giving it away now."

Harry noted then that Sarah and Samuel were talking quietly and animatedly together.

"Oh, yes, I really do think they'll do better together than apart, but I should find a place to sit down now and enjoy my lunch."

"Pardon me, ma'am?" asked a wizard walking by.

"It's just that I can't abide a cold sausage, you see," Luna replied.

The wizard made a funny little dip of his head and scurried off; Harry had to cover his mouth not to laugh as Luna walked away. 

Shifting so that he could see Severus' face in the dim light, he said, "She didn't interfere with their food, did she?"

"She did," Severus asserted, nodding towards their children.

They were busily reworking the writing on their food bags. "Sarah's Soups" and "Samuel's Sausages" became "S. & S. Food Brooms."

"Ess and Ess," Harry said, laughing. "That's a good one—now it doesn't matter which of their esses comes first." 

"Whichever one does, I hope Sarah teaches Samuel that cooling charm. I'm hot," Severus said.

As the twins separated and moved down the Alley in different directions, Harry said, "Let's take this off." He removed his Invisibility Cloak with a flourish and startled a banking customer. "Sorry about that!"

The man shook his fist at them and kept going.

"Sausage and soup!" came the distant sound of Samuel's voice, as Severus said, "If we split up, we can each buy from one of the children, and then buy from the other after we finish our first bowls."

"I don't know that I'm that hungry," Harry replied, tucking away his cloak.

"Soup and a sausage!" called Sarah.

"I do know that I will leave you to sort their jealousy if we do this any other way."

Harry rolled his eyes at Severus. "Right, then. How long d'you think it will be before they start hawking sausage-potato soup?"

Severus smirked. "Don't you mean potato-sausage soup?"

"Don't you think," said Luna, from behind them, "that it's a perfect day for broom food?"

Harry and Severus looked up to see that clouds were forming over the Alley. 

"Luna, using weather charms in public spaces is—"

"Prohibited by law, Harry, yes, she knows that," Severus told him.

"But since your spouse asked me to employ the charm . . . ."

"Severus!"

Luna grinned. "Don't worry, Harry. Just imagine what Sarah and Samuel's sales will be like now."

"You're a good aunt, Luna," he replied, turning to Severus, "and you're a great father."

"Indeed, and as I spent my morning arranging an act of parental greatness, I believe that I deserve my reward."

"Fine, potato-sausage soup it is."

"Don't you mean sausage-potato, Harry?" Luna asked.

"No," said Severus, Summoning Harry's Invisibility Cloak. "He means sausage, full stop."

"It's a good day for _that_ , too," Luna said over her shoulder, as she walked away.

"Unshrink your Firebolt, Harry. We need more privacy than the cloak can afford us."

"But . . . aren't you hungry?"

"Oh, I am . . . for broom food."


End file.
